


That Is That

by felixsyeeyee



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Retail, But Responsibility, Everyone Works at Target But Changbin, I Tried, I'm Not Ashamed, M/M, No Beta, Recreational Drug Use, Retail Can Suck My Dick, Some Humor, Target, They Are Just College Boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26696233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felixsyeeyee/pseuds/felixsyeeyee
Summary: It became a simple job, show up, zone the department, break, push out metro, lunch, price, leave. Before Minho knew it, he had become complacent. The job had become nice background noise to his busy school life and on top of that he was getting paid well. Life was good.Or boring.A.K.A The fic where Stray Kids work at Target.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	That Is That

Minho hadn’t expected to have worked here a year and a half. 

To be fair to himself, the pay was decent and ever since they moved him to the shoe department, he’s had more time to hide in the backroom and contemplate if anyone would find his body if he choked on the jolly ranchers he steals from TSC. (Jisung had informed him a little too late that they were for if a team member had diabetes. _After_ Minho had managed to steal all the blue. He was a little bit guilty.) But he hadn’t expected to spend his college career working under Brian Cornell’s excellent leadership at Target store number 1539. 18 year old him had shown up in the city, bright eyed and ready to make his mark on the world and after a failed job working on campus making maple bacon shakes for high frat dudes, he decided that food service was behind him and retail was the future. Leaving that job was for the better perhaps but his roommate Changbin was not as excited to hear about his unemployment and rent was due on the first before putting his headphones back on. 

Not that he was incorrect. Being a single mother was hard when you were a gay 20 year old with a cat and $20000 in student loans. So before the new semester started Minho put his fingers to the keys and lied through his teeth that he loved people and would LOVE to work in the style department. (Despite the most stylish he had ever been was the phase in high school where he matched his sock to his nikes.) So he started at 13 an hour and was thrown into the deep end of Zebras, metros, push, mywork, audits and Karens. So many Karens. Minho had thought himself a fairly affable person but after going through BTS and the holiday season, he was fairly sure his smile didn’t reach his eyes anymore. 

He had been working there long enough where he didn’t talk to guests anymore and instead finished his tasks with the sole purpose of dicking off with the other style department members. Jisung was also in the shoe section while Seungmin was in Mens, Felix and Jeongin were in Kids. Them combined with Ryujin in hips and Hyunjin in ready-to-wear made them his go-tos to rant about annoying guests or complain about hours. Jisung had been there the longest and had taught Minho everything about Shoes after he was moved from Mens. It was a tough time cos his time with Seungmin had come to an end, and he didn’t know who to crash metros into if they had to be seperated. After the move though, him and Jisung became fast friends often snapchatting videos of resets or just overall Shoes problems if they didn’t have shifts together. It became a simple job, show up, zone the department, break, push out metro, lunch, price, leave. Before Minho knew it, he had become complacent. The job had become nice background noise to his busy school life and on top of that he was getting paid well. Life was good. 

Or boring.

-

Now cut to present day Minho sitting in his living room the summer before his Junior year with Jisung and Hyunjin, half of a season into The Great British Bake off and half of a Whiteclaw into a subtle buzz. Changbin has been MIA since Friday but they have an unspoken rule to leave a 3 day buffer before they report a death to the others immediate family, as long as they keep up the snap streak they’ve had since highschool they were fine. He was probably on a producing bender with his music department friend and would come back smelling like weed and inspiration and they’d go to Taco Bell. 

Netflix asks if they’re still watching and Jisung uses the opportunity to peel his face off of Hyunjins lap and exclaim “Oh shit. BTS is coming up!” startling Minho from his thoughts and Hyunjin from his cat nap. 

“BTS is on Bake off? Aren’t they Korean?” Hyunjin blinked, stifling a yawn.

“ARen’T ThEy KoReAN? Dumbass you’re Korean. BTS as in Back To School it's coming up in a few weeks and it's hell on Earth. Imagine Christmas and Black Friday but it’s rich white sorority kids and their parent’s making your life as difficult as possible.”

“Oh shit.” 

“Oh shit is right, we’re about to get loaded up on hours and like 50 new people. They’re all going to be incompetent. Minho you came from back to school hires right?” Jisung throws him a look as if he really can’t remember despite being the one to train him.

“Yes, shoes sensei, I was. And I wasn’t incompetent I’ve been naturally talented at picking one-for-ones from the womb.” Minho rolls his eyes and downs a few more mouthfuls of his Whiteclaw before looking at Hyunjin who's already looking at him. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering how many people were in your orientation batch?” He asks and Minho has to take a second because he honestly can’t remember. He had assumed Ryujin showed up at the same time as him but she said her anniversary was in a month while his was a week or two from now.

“I dunno to be honest I think I’m the only one left?” He shrugs and looks at Jisung. 

“Don’t look at me! I don’t remember people's names anymore unless they pass their 90 days!” Jisung points his empty can at the two of them. Hyunjin gasps. “Wait really?”

“Yes really. I've seen so many people come and go I’m tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives” He put his hands together like he’s about to ascend into the astral plane. There’s a pause.

“So you’re just a dick,” Minho concludes and turns back to the tv. Hyunjin falls on the floor laughing at Jisungs heart broken face as he starts singing the beginning to Mad World. Eventually they get back to their spots (Minho a good three feet away from Jisung draping himself on Hyunjin) and Jisung goes “But seriously guys you’ll see you won't remember ANYONE.”

Noel announces the baker’s theme for the week and That, Minho thinks, is That.

~

The start of it Not Being That can, in retrospect, be traced to Changbin showing up at 2 am while Minho was taking a piss with the door open. In Minho’s defense, he wasn’t expecting him back. And most definitely not at 2 am on a Sunday. Unfazed tho, Changbin walks in and leans against the door. He’s wearing a stained Kuromi hoodie with matching purple eye bags. The epitome of a cool guy. Changbin takes a deep breath and Minho prepares himself for the worst. He starts dramatically.

“Minho, I have been through it. I have a tale of woe -”

“Changbin, _please_. Can I at least put my dick away?” The older struggles to quickly pull his pajama pants over his hips as he reaches to flush the toilet, almost falling. Wouldn’t that be ironic, he thinks, dying with my dick out in front of Changbin on a toilet, I would die as I lived. 

“Well, hurry up then!” He shoos Minho into the living room and man-handles him onto the loveseat. He stands in front of him like he’s about to give a speech. “So you work at Target.” He says. And smiles. There was probably a rest of that thought but Changbin paused. Nothing comes.

“Changbin.” Minho sighed. “Are you high? Yes. I work at Target. Can I go back to bed?” He moves to stand up before the younger stops him in a rush. “Wait no wait wait wait.” A breath. “Soo I was with my crew this weekend. Working on this summer project? Yanno that one? When my friend Chan, the senior, mentions that his work has been getting all weird and cut on hours and he might get laid off. And then your pal Jisung-”

“Wait Jisung was there?”

“Not the point. Anyways, Jisung was like ‘They’re hiring so many imbeciles for BTS’ and then we were like ‘Wait there’s new members of BTS?’ and he was like ‘NOT bTS. BTS like back to school’ and we were like ‘Oh haha’ that-”

“Changbin please.”

“Wait. Sorry. So he left and then it was just Chan and I and we were testing out some things. Don’t give me that look there was only some Fireball involved. And I was like ‘Chan buddy why don’t you just get a job at Target’ and he was like ‘I don’t know if I can I’m about to be a senior I’ll just take out another loan’ and then I was like ‘Buddy no they fire everyone after a month anyways’ and he was like ‘I’ll consider it but they probably won’t even look at my application’ and I was like ‘Wait I actually have a roommate that works there he can say he know you’ and he was like ‘Wait didn’t you say they fire people after a month anyways’ and I was like ‘Yeah but he’s kinda a pusho-” 

Minho just kicks Changbin in the ankle at this point. He's tired and just wants to go watch youtube until he passes out. The older stares at his roommate who’s on the ground clutching his ankle too hard for the damage actually dealt. “So tldr, you want me to put in work for Chan?” Changbin finally stops moaning at the question and looks up at him with a face that eerily reflects the pout emoji.

“Pretty please? He’d be under Bahng I think he’s going to go for like tech or something? Please please please.” The rapper starts climbing Minho at this point and he tries to shake him off. They wrestle for a bit under the guise of Changbin insisting on a “thank you kiss.” Then they fall asleep. 

~

Minho asks Allen from HR to move Bahng Chan to the top of the interview list. Changbin never brought it up again and That Was That.

~

When Jisung had proclaimed in the apartment that the hours would skyrocket, he would come to be known as a Goddamn Liar. You see, the big wigs at corporate were playing darts with Minho's life. The capitalist pigs had apparently decided that “Low Hours” “Full Reset” and “Back To School” were his three greatest wishes to destress before the new semester. Which to the brunette, meant a large workload and no time to get it done. Jisung was often too busy flirting with Felix to muster up the care to help, so it left a majority of the job to Minho. 

For those unawares of the oh-so-important workings of a Target store, there are Three Main Departments. Front of store (FoS) i.e. cashiers and guest service, Hardlines i.e. grocery and furniture and Softlines, i.e. style, tech and beauty. Sure, there are nuances but if you wanted a full dissertation you came to the wrong fanfiction. Style is in softlines, because things are more free flowing. The way the clothing is set on the floor is always moving around, and with every new metro of product to push to the floor, the team member must decide where within the visual merchandising guide (VMG) it belongs. The problem here, is that within style the shoe section is the punishment zone. Shoes is the place where they send all the workers that have passed their 90 days, but don’t have the work ethic to keep up with the more important and better selling floor pads (like Women’s Ready-To-Wear and Mens.) And because there are more important and better selling floor pads, shoes gets, in a sense, shafted. 

Minho beat himself up about the move when it happened. Maybe he wasn’t kissing the Team Leads asses enough, maybe should actually talk to guests once in a while. But Jisung had taught him that in the tiny shoe floor pad, none of those things are needed. God has abandoned the shoe’s floor pad and no one would ever look for them again. So he learned the ropes and once he was acclimated, Jisung broke to him the one con of being in Shoes. That not only has God abandoned him, but Brain Cornell also. Apparently the person hired to make the Shoes VMG had last stepped foot in a Target in 1987. While most Targets had gotten remodeled and changed layouts, the shoe VMG somehow looks like it came from a moon target that served moon people with moon feet. No team leader or even the store manager could make sense of the map, and the common response phrase was “just get it done.” So Jisung had taught himself how to do it two years ago, and then he taught Minho. They were, in a sense, the only two people at Target 1539 that understood shoes.

And because of that, they were alone for this perfect low-hour, high-priority shoe reset storm.

~

Minho felt like he hadn’t seen anyone in a week. He was tired. He barely could muster up the effort to put on a red t-shirt and one of his name tags (the one that read “Min-ho He/Him/His” or the one where he covered up his name with a Nintendo sticker.) When he did he often came home with dust blackened hands and arms sore from carrying shoe boxes up and down ladders. No one at work would or could offer him help because they were struggling with the busy nature of the store, being the closest store to the university and also Not Walmart. 

He had little to no time to dick off with his friends and while he was lazy, he also knew when to get to work and now was one of those times. The new social isolation he found himself in meant that he didn’t know any of the new people in the department (which he found hiring them weird considered he was getting less than 40 hours a week) and also didn't know any of the gm or FoS people. Minho had told himself to look out for a Chan but one hadn’t appeared and he didn’t have the time or energy to actually look, so it slipped from his mind. 

He had about a week and a half to get this done, and boots weren’t about to move themselves.

~

“ _Hey Minnow in Shoes? You have two metros back here can I have a goaltime_?” Team lead Courtney called onto the walkie. She had been working at a Target for two weeks and could apparently not understand his name or that he was b u s y. Maybe he should send her the SHINee pronunciation guide he did with all of his high school teachers when he moved to the middle of nowhere and the only other Asian kid in school was Changbin (who went by Bartholemew just for shits and giggles apparently.) 

“This is _Minnow_ I’ll go check on them.” He responds instead hoping she gets the message and puts down his box to head to the back. 

On the way there he passes infants, where Felix is dying of laughter and when he sees Minho, the pink haired buffoon only breaks down harder because when all light in your life has been taken by Target, “Minnow” was the funniest thing that you could hear all day. Still walking, Minho turns around and levels him with a warning look “Felix, I swear if you even think about telling Jisung I will knock down your jean wall.” 

Before Felix can respond the older pushes into the backroom while turning around. But instead of coming into contact with the push doors, he manages to run straight into a moving metal object. Not hard enough to knock him down, but enough to stop the object and his journey into the room. With his face.

“Oh! Damn I’m sorry! Wait shit are we allowed to say damn? Shit, wait are you okay?” A hurried voice says. Through the fingers clutching his nose he sees what is the electronics cage be pushed out of the way before a curly mop of hair rushes over to him. “Bro, dude I’m really sorry you can barely see through that thing.” He blabbers some more and really, Minho’s face doesn’t even hurt that bad and he’s probably not bleeding.

“Can you do it harder next time?” Minho laughs and removes the hand from his face to see his assailant. 

_Oh_ , he thinks, _He_ can do it harder next time. The guy seems to be about Minho’s age with a droopy pair of eyes and a strong nose bridge. He was fit, with a red flannel over a dark shirt and dark jeans and… dark air force ones. And very very fluffy brown hair. Minho wanted to pet him. 

A strangled “I can _what?”_ breaks him out of his stupor and Minho realizes he’s asked this ,albeit hot, stranger to euthanize him. And he looks like a wounded puppy, Minho wants to comfort him. But all his lizard brain manages to pump out is “I would like to get workmans comp, so please aim for the knees next time. Bye-” he looks at flannel boys nametag “Chris. The grind can’t stop.” He gives a quick smile before running off to report back to Courtney, but he thinks he can hear a “Bye Nintendo!” called out after him. 

~

Two days later he’s with Hyunjin and Seungmin after work in the drive-thru line for milkshakes. They closed together and Minho doesn’t own a car and Hyunjin wanted milkshakes so they both bullied Minnie into taking them for treats. There had been no sign of Chris since then and if he actually put effort into himself on the first day after they met, no one commented. 

It’s a Wednesday and he doesn’t work until next Sunday so he’s treating today like a Friday. Hyunjin is too but he knows that boy works tomorrow so maybe he’s just this excited all the time. 

“Seungmin get me peanut butter chocolate.” Hyunjin whines from the backseat. Minho glances back and the long haired boy is splayed across all three seats like he’s seeing a therapist.

“I want a mint choco.” He tells Seungmin getting an “ew” from the backseat and a sigh from the drivers side.

“I was talking to the new guy and he hates that stuff.” Seungmin says pulling forward a spot. The backseat pipes up again “Which one you gotta be more specific there’s three greenies in my department alone.” Seungmin thinks for a moment. “Tech guy? Kinda short dark hair-”

“Chris?” Minho asks too quickly and too loudly causing the younger to give him a strange look. “Yeah that guy? Since I’m in men’s I saw him all the time last week. He’s actually pretty cool.”

“I don’t know anyone's names” Hyunjin piped up. “Wait. Minho. How did you know his? You’re never over in Electronics.” 

Honestly, screw that kid for having more than one brain cell at a time like this. The last time Minho actually admitted he found someone attractive was sophomore year Christmas break and it _was_ Hyunjin. Before Jisung very loudly asked Hyunjin in the breakroom if he went “that way” which bless the kids heart he did not get. Eventually he stage-whispered “Are you G-A-Y.” Apparently one of the lucky audience reported them sending them both to an HR training about how yout not allowed to ask the new people if they’re gay. But that's also how they found out Hyunjin was dating a girl who was studying abroad. And also how they had to be the ones to comfort him when she ran off with some British guy named Dave. Brought them together but it also made him swear never to ask for wingmen again. 

“He hit me with the cage the other day.” He waved them off, sweating slightly despite it being the middle of the night. 

“Now wait a minute I hit you with a metro my first week and - Hey can we get a large Oreo-” Seungmin’s point was thankfully cut off by it being their turn to order and Minho relaxed. Once these kids had their faces full they’d be distracted. 

A finger poking at Minho’s shoulder said otherwise. Hyunjin leaned in way too close to Minho’s ear and whispered. “I met Chris too. He's really nice.” and in his life Minho has never heard a more menacing _hehe_ before the kid shouted “AND CUTE.” startling Seungmin out of his ordering to glare at them. Minho undid his buckle and leapt into the backseat deciding if he had to go to jail he might as well do it well and commit second degree murder. “So you DO think he's cu-” was all Hyunjin managed to get out before Minho’s tiny but deadly hands got around his throat. 

“15.87? Okay thank you.” Seungmin rolled his window up and then shouted at the pair in the back “GUYS I HAVE ALMOST 200,000 MILES ON THIS BABY CAN WE PLEASE NOT BREAK IT.” He swatted his hand back a few times before they finally broke apart. “Okay thank you. As I was saying Minho, you didn’t bother to learn my name until I babysat your cat for a WEEK and even then you still called me Sungnim.” 

“Wait but he knew my name from the beginning?” Hyunjin asked. They both ignored him.

Minho looked out the window. “This doesn’t prove anything.” He muttered but he knew it proved something. 

“Okay sure bud.” Seungmin chuckled and dropped the topic. They had shakes to drink and boys to not think about.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hope you like this and the Target lingo makes sense! If there's anything that doesn't make sense please ask and I'll start a glossary.  
> Probably going to be like two more chapters. Hope you like it!


End file.
